


A Step From the Edge

by juhaal



Series: Forgiveness [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: And I love Alfred, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Crossing Timelines, Damian Wayne Feels, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Gen, I'm just really sad how Dami is treated sometimes, Spoilers for Batman's Issue 77, kind of a character study?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23622553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juhaal/pseuds/juhaal
Summary: He could have been there for months, years even, when he finally had the courage to say what he needed to Alfred.If Pennyworth was at the kitchen distracted preparing their lunch with his back to Damian, the setting couldn’t be more appropriate.
Relationships: Damian Wayne & Alfred Pennyworth
Series: Forgiveness [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1725628
Comments: 9
Kudos: 174





	A Step From the Edge

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Hope everyone is safe!
> 
> Well, I was a bit insecure of posting this because I only started reading the comics a few months back. Buuuut here we are. 
> 
> I mixed the timelines a bit? In this, Dami is 15 and Alfred was killed 2 years prior. Yeah. Well. Leave a comment or a kudo if you like it! :D
> 
> Triger Warnings: Dami treats himself poorly. Lowself esteem. Depression in general

_ ‘Who's gonna fight for what's right _

_ Who's gonna help us survive _

_ We're in the fight of our lives _

_ And we're not ready to die _

_ Who's gonna fight for the weak _

_ Who's gonna make 'em believe _

_ I've got a hero _

_ I've got a hero _

_ Livin in me’ _

_ Hero, Skillet  _

-

It felt like drowning. 

The feeling of having cotton all around your head, muffling the sounds reaching your ears and smoothing every jerky movement. The burning in your trachea and esophagus with the wrongness of breathing and swallowing something different than pure air, creating chaos and reflexes in your body that only worsen the situation but that you can not control; and, of course, the most important sensation: the despair of trying to save yourself and being incapable of doing so. 

Through the heavy smoke and falling pebble, inside the overwhelming circle of blazing flames consuming everything around him and the sound of the still bubbling green water from the Lazarus Pit, Damian found himself staring tiredly ahead with emerald glazed eyes while lying on the shaking ground. 

He was so,  _ so _ tired. 

He sighed brokenly, the air escaping his mouth with a wet noise. The sounds around him jumbled in an indiscernible way, making the situation he was into something way more peaceful than it should feel like. The smoke made him cough a few times, almost numbing his whole body with the pain, and yet he simply couldn’t care any less. 

Smirking weakly after the last coughing fit, trembling from head to toe in obvious shock and feeling blood leaving his body from his many wounds and from his mouth in a bad sign of internal bleeding, he could only think it was fitting, really. 

Wasn’t he blamed for taking the lives of so many people? Of being one of the bad guys? At least this way his Grandfather would never again cheat death. 

(Even if now  _ no one _ would ever cheat death again, since the Lazarus Pit was no more. 

Sacrifices, right?)

He didn’t even notice how his eyes had closed on their own volition. 

Somewhere along the way, with the impending collapsing of the last cave housing a Pit, Damian didn’t notice anything anymore: not like his consciousness was slipping bit by bit, or how the puddle of blood only got bigger and bigger under him. 

There was no cutscene, per say. 

He just was no more. 

-

“Oh, Master Damian.” An old voice reached him, tingling his senses, making him feel like this one was really important and missed - and impossible, too. “Master Damian, you should not be here already, young man…” 

Slowly he opened his eyes, weakly, finding the bright light over him too blinding and soon closing them again tightly. 

Callused fingers started going through his dark tresses, the presence behind them making his body memory act before he could even actively recognize whose they belonged to. There was a knot inside his throat, a burning heat behind his eyelids, a frown on his face like he was trying to keep his emotions in check, and then- “Oh my boy, what happened?” And the british accent that he missed so strongly for the last couple of years just destroyed the weak dam that held his always leashed feelings inside, crumbling his resolve so easily that his mind finally caught up with his limbs and, even while his emerald eyes kept strongly shut, his arms encircled the lithe old body at his side.

“Alfred!” Damian gasped, not even noticing how he called the man by his first name. 

“Master Damian... I did not expect you for our tea time so soon.” The old butler's voice shook in a mix of mirth and sorrow while returning the tight embrace. “Does Master Bruce knows what is happening? You did not leave the manor without letting him know again, right, young Sir?"

Damian couldn't keep the laugh even if he had tried.

"Please, Pennyworth, who do you take me for?" And he finally opened his eyes, sitting back on the grass and giving himself the space needed to observe and admire Alfred Pennyworth's person again. The tiny smirk that appeared on his own face was as innocent as they could get. 

"If I had the freedom of speech I would say a very brave and inconsequent young boy, Sir." The sass was present on the tone of voice and on the raised eyebrow, and Damian couldn't be happier. 

Yet he  _ could not _ keep the 'tt' from leaving his smirking lips. “Tt. A Wayne, basically." Damian drawled, getting himself up while dusting his clothes.

"A  _ Robin _ , Sir. A more... Appropriate definition, if you may." Alfred quipped, getting up too. His always perfected and proper instance hit Damian with so much fondness that for a few, tiny seconds, the teenager was out of breath.

Then, "Right as always, Pennyworth." He agreed, with a soft smile not really common of one Damian Al Ghul Wayne.

But who cared? 

He was dead.

Was he not?

  
  
  
  
  


He was in some sort of Ethereal Wayne Manor. Sometimes walls or doors would phase out softly into endless light, and others a door to a room would open to another place in Gotham, like Tarbooshes before it was blown up or even the Ice Cream store he usually went with Grayson when being his Robin. Night would come when he wished for it, and seeing how he could draw or train as much as he wanted during the day - it didn’t happen very often (it was totally  _ not _ because Pennyworth kept insisting on a bed time. Really).

There was no Titus, Alfred the Cat, Batcow or Goliath, but there was no difficult siblings or a distant Father either. 

And there  _ was _ a Alfred the butler, so, no competition really. 

Time seemed something irrelevant and the  _ peace _ was sometimes maddening. Nothing seemed  _ real _ in a material kind of way. Every bird or squirrel disappeared as soon as he touched them. The wind blowing his hair under one of the trees from the manor garden would vanish as soon as he acknowledged it. 

Yet, for an uncountable time, he just ignored it all. 

(It was  _ so much better  _ than the Hell he was sent to the last time he was dead.)

“Sir.” Pennyworth called, carrying a tray with their tea to the little picnic table-clothe dropped on the grass. The roses the old butler had always nurtured and cared for were in full bloom. 

“Be careful, your knees are not so young anymore.” Damian quipped indifferently, fooling a total of no one. 

“I would like to say that I am more in shape than you, Master Damian, but there is no such a thing here.” Pennyworth drawled, sitting beside the boy and pouring the tea for both of them. 

In silence, they sipped their tea-cups, savoring the flavour of something that didn’t really exist.

The  _ homely _ feeling Damian got from this simple banter would never stop astounding him. If his ten year old self, the one from before arriving to his Father’s home, knew that someday he would care for this old coot this much he was sure the kid would pierce him with a sword not caring one bit about timelines. 

“Why here of all places, Pennyworth?” The words escaped his mouth before he could stop himself. 

Alfred straightened, rigidly sitting in a way that could not be comfortable. This sad pensive look passed through his eyes, and yet all that Damian could really see was  _ profound love _ . 

“I simply knew that someday my family would need me here, Master Damian.” He answered truthly, smiling with sealed lips the one smile he used to give when he knew something Damian didn’t. “True, I feared when the day would come to happen… However I can assure you, Sir, that I would never have imagined you to be the first.” And there went his collected face, his control crumpling with old lines of regret, pain and sadness. He never had appeared his true age as much as that moment. 

Damian felt numb. 

Gazing around him, the landscape he knew from memory alone, trying in vain to avoid those knowing eyes in front of him- “There was nothing more for me, Pennyworth.” He confessed what he had thought for so long after seeing the Family’s most important person be murdered in front of him. He still could hear the bones breaking.

“Master Damian!”

“I did what I had to. I destroyed my Grandfather’s chance of one day accomplishing his objectives, and destroyed the only chance I had of bringing you back too. No mad Demon Damian to destroy the future and no League of Shadows to move the gears from behind the curtains for the centuries to come. There would be no blood on my hands anymore.” He forced forward, finally staring resolutely at the old man with not a ounce of regret on his green, emerald eyes. “I saved the World from myself and from my legacy.” 

Feeling way more vulnerable than he used to let himself be in front of others, in life or not, Damian decided that for now it was enough. 

“I think I am tired of this outing, Pennyworth. See you at dinner.” 

The back door of the manor opened up to an art gallery, and without looking back to Pennyworth’s tears, he left the Wayne grounds while the sky darkened bit by bit. 

  
  
  
  
  


One day, there were two new people in the grounds talking to Pennyworth, and Damian couldn’t be more confused.

Until he saw one of their faces and the confusion was totally replaced by blind fury. 

“ _ You _ !” The shout escaped his mouth with force and hate, making the three that stood at the first steps of the stairwell jump on their feet. “It was all  _ your _ fault!” And he jumped, going straight as a bullet at the direction of one Thomas Wayne. 

They were on the ground, with Damian above the man dealing punches that didn’t leave any pain or mark behind.

Like it never happened at all. 

“Master Damian! Stop this, now!” Pennyworth’s words sounded far away, mixing with the ones from  _ that  _ day, the pleads to ‘ _ not in front of the boy, please _ ’ that echoed inside his head in an unstoppable loop- “Damian Wayne, stop this right now!” And somehow, the man pulled him by his neck like he weighed nothing, getting Damian off the one responsible for his murder and silencing the chaos that filled the teenager to the brim. 

Damian knew it wasn’t  _ him _ . He knew, deep inside, that the Thomas in front of him was the one that had died when his Father was eight years old, in a dark alley from his own timeline and universe. Yet…

Yet…

“Sir, he is not the Thomas you remember.” Pennyworth sounded stern, but one look at his face showed enough how he really felt.

“Damian…” The woman, the one he had ignored until that moment, called his name with uncertainty. “We are  _ so sorry _ .” She offered quietly, truthly, while her husband got up slowly from the ground with not a slice of anger or disappointment on his face, only-

Worry.

Compassion. 

_ Love. _

All the triggers were there, however, for the first time since that nightmarish night - Damian could only crumple inside the arms of his Grandparents and let them take his pain and rage in form of his bitter tears and broken sobs.

With family surrounding him in a tight embrace and with Pennyworth’s fingers caressing his black tresses, just like when he woke up in this place for the first time, he wondered... 

Was this what being loved felt like? 

  
  
  
  
  


He asked them what they were doing on this plane of existence, and the answer was so similar to the one Pennyworth gave him that Damian almost asked if they had agreed to say the same words beforehand. 

It was difficult. Sometimes he forgot that the Thomas beside him wasn’t the one that had been capable of doing something that not even Joker had achieved: destroying the bat family. Others times he couldn’t deal with all the emotions that were being resurfaced being in the company of the three elders. 

A few times he wished for the blanket of the night, so he could be just as he had always been: alone. 

  
  
  
  
  


He could have been there for months, years even, when he finally had the courage to say what he needed to Alfred. 

If Pennyworth was at the kitchen distracted preparing their lunch with his back to Damian, the setting couldn’t be more appropriate. 

“It destroyed us.” There was no mistaking what he meant, even if he started it all from the absolute nothing. “There was no one to glue us together, to show us how to be  _ less _ emotionally constipated. One of us could have stepped up, but  _ of course _ none did. They all expected that Father would do it, but his escape from all the tragedy and hardships became Selina and the love she offered, the new possibilities: a new family, maybe. After all, we were all a bunch of imbeciles that could not talk about feelings to save our own lives.” He was getting out of track there. “I tried to. Even with the truth of being the one at fault for your death, I still tried to reach for each of them. But, they all had their own issues to attend. Grayson didn’t even remember us, so I can not blame the others for moving forward and away from all the mess.” 

It was easier if Damian didn’t look at Pennyworth’s direction. Even if by his peripheral vision he could see the man frozen where he stood.

“For a time I kept working with the Teen Titans… Making a lot more mistakes while trying to be my own person, not only Wayne or Al Ghul... But I could not forget. Every single day memories haunted me endlessly and every night nightmares assured me of my blame. I made more mistakes, because I could not concentrate or focus, and the team suffered from it - what really was not a surprise, I tended to do it to everyone I connected myself to.” He shrugged, feeling his heart beating erratically inside his ribcage. “And then, even after everything Grandfather had said about me being a disappointment and not needing me anymore, he still made it clear that he did  _ want _ me back. Even if he had to threat stealing your body and putting you in a Lazarus Pit to actually make me give him the appropriate attention.”

At that, the butler turned to him immediately. Still, Damian could not stare at him any more than a few seconds before. It was better to do it like band-aid, right?

“I thought about it. I really did, but I also knew that I could not do it, I could not force you on a wretched existence just for my selfish needs.” Damian whispered, ashamed, but marched on, “So I had to stop him for good.” 

“Master Damian-”

“I thought I could kill him, but I was wrong - Oh I bet Todd would have liked to hear me saying this, but well, his loss.” The smirk was so wrong, what was he doing- “I destroyed his Lazarus Pits, even the one on Nanda Parbat hidden deep inside the mountain. Of course it was not an easy feat, because once I bombed it all, at the last one, I had to face the person that raised me to be his vessel, to be the one that would help him conquer the World... And Ra’s just  _ escaped _ our supposedly battle to the death. Absolutely heavily injured, but  _ alive _ .” His hands were shaking and Damian felt bile rising on his throat - but he couldn’t stop, not now that he was  _ finally _ putting it out there for someone to hear - not now that he was  _ finally _ letting go- “He left me to die a dishonorable death, dying by being buried by the mountain and not at the tip of a sword in combat. The worst punishment for a traitor. Yet, I could not be more satisfied myself: no more immortal life-” 

He was prepared to keep going. It seemed that, when opening the dam, there was no holding back. 

However, being embraced tightly by Alfred while being picked up like a little child shut him up efficiently. 

“You must stop this rude habit of yours of interrupting your elders, young man.” Pennyworth choked, holding his head with one of his large and thin hands while holding the rest of his weigh with his other arm. “You were  _ so brave _ , Master Damian. So,  _ so _ brave. I am most sorry that you had to watch that horrible scene of my demise, however it is of utmost importance that you understand one single thing.” 

He stopped, tightening even more his arms around Damian, who stood petrified with the surprise of being held after everything that he had said. After so much time of no comfort at all. 

“It was not your fault, my boy.  _ Not your fault _ .” 

For the second time in an untimely place, Damian crumpled. 

Letting go of every restrain and sorrow he was still carrying inside of him.

To this afterlife kind of existence.

  
  


  
  


"You can not stay here, Sir." 

"Why not? Here I have you and my grandparents, and obviously all of this places to draw and just… Be."

"There are people that need you, Master Damian. Back home."

"Really? I actually don't think so, Pennyworth."

“And I am sure myself that there are."

"... Tt."

There it was, the eyebrow rising thing. Pennyworth sure was determinate. 

“It’s not even possible. I am dead, remember? And I already filled my quota of being resurrected.”

The secretive tight lipped smile the old man sent his way showed how the butler clearly thought differently. 

  
  
  
  
  


Until one day, the one Damian would think back to be the turning point, he got a glimpse of what he had left behind. 

One day, while walking through the corridors he knew just like the palm of his hand, the  _ place _ chose to open the supposedly den door to his bedroom - but not the one he remembered from a few years back. 

Many of his things were in disarray over his desk, something that would never have happened if he or Pennyworth were still there. All his drawings on plain sight were organized on a folder, protected by plastic sheets while keeping the lines secured through time. There were a few clothes scattered over his chair he recognized from two years ago, before he moved out of the manor, and he wondered if his smell was still on the fabric. 

At first he didn’t understand why his room was a mess. And then, finally noticing everything else and looking at the great picture it all created, Damian could see the pattern: they were there because they represented a not living memory of who he had been. They represented hope, perhaps.

The hope all the machines and tubes keeping him alive over his bed, with atrophied muscles and clear loss of weight, would hold long enough for him to go back. 

So surprised by what he was seeing, he didn’t notice Pennyworth entering the room too. 

“You see, young Sir, they will not give up on you.” The man could be sickenly  _ kind _ when he wanted, and he chose that moment to be the kindest as he could get. “They are waiting for your return.” It hurt Damian more than he thought possible.

“I thought I was dead... It would be way easier if I was.” It was like there was no brain-to-mouth filter on. He heard Alfred inhale and he just  _ knew  _ what the old man would say. “This changes nothing, Pennyworth. It would go just like last time: for a few days, weeks or months, everyone will be invested in the family and acting like they care enough to accept each others flaws and difficult personalities… Just to return to old habits as soon they feel secure on the knowledge that everyone is alive, so they do not have to try so hard.” 

Bruce faded in and out from the room, changing the position his body was laying on the bed and caressing his cheek, wistfully looking at his sunken face. 

“I was walking on the gray line for so long, trying endlessly to fit in my Father's morals and suffering for failing so spectacularly, that it is  _ hard  _ to see the appeal of going back only to lose him all over again after a few days.” 

“Things can change, Master Damian. It does not need to be a repeat of last time. You are a different person now.  _ You _ , young Sir, can change things for the better.” 

He left the room without answering. He needed time. 

And time was something that this place could give him in buckets.

  
  
  
  
  


The room became a meditation place. The manor wouldn’t stop sending him to it, so he started to meditate as much as he could in a failed attempt of ignoring his surroundings. 

His curiosity always got the better of him. 

His Father was the one to visit the most. He appeared to have programmed himself to be there on a specific interval to change his body position, possibly trying to avoid bedsores. Sometimes he would sit by Damian’s bed and look at him for hours, and others he would caress Damian’s hair or face. 

Drake would visit sporadically and he would  _ always _ leave a cup of hot tea on his nightstand. He would stay for hours, fading in and out, doing what Father would by changing his positions, and somehow even without saying a word Damian could feel the sentimentality from where he was seated, in the ‘inbetween dimension’. 

(It was the name he gave the  _ place _ in spite of it not letting him go anywhere else. Damian regretted nothing.)

He couldn’t stop thinking about Pennyworth’s words. How could  _ he _ change things for the better, if until now he had destroyed and hurt everyone around him that dared to  _ believe _ in him? 

It was still difficult to accept that it wasn’t his fault Pennyworth was dead, but maybe he was getting there. 

Todd would visit during patrol time, always at night, to read books just like  _ Pride and Prejudice  _ out loud. Damian couldn’t hear a thing, but if he was paying full attention to what Todd was saying was only because he was strengthening his lip-reading training. 

And one day Richard appeared, too. 

There was this shadow over his eyes that allowed Damian to know that his older brother had remembered everything.

That visit was the one to finally get him out of the room with enough determination that the place allowed him to at least go to the garden. 

Small mercies. 

  
  
  
  
  


“Do I have a choice, Pennyworth?” 

“Always, Sir.” 

“Could I move forwards?” 

“Yes.” 

“But I would never see you again, would I?”

“... No, Master Damian. We would be in different places, I am afraid.” 

“In a way, Pennyworth, I would prefer it this way. I’m sure my end would not be as pleasant as yours, and I would  _ not _ want  _ you _ to be there… What if I chose to go back?” 

“You will never be alone, young Sir. I promise you that.”

  
  
  
  
  


The idea of  _ fighting  _ for his family festered inside him like a poisonous disease, spreading to every corner of his being and occupying his mind to almost delirious levels. 

Friends he never thought would want to see him started to appear all around the manor, strengthening this  _ fever _ or determination that would grow bigger and bigger at every turn. Somehow his former Teen Titans teams and even Jon were let inside his room, even with all the ‘No metas in Gotham’ rule his Father had always stood for. 

It felt too much like a compromise. 

Acknowledging it felt too similar to how he felt when his grandparents hugged him tightly, or when Alfred held him while repeating over and over how _it_ _was not his fault_. 

He felt so light. 

Unsurprisingly, it only took Pennyworth unlimited love to show what already existed, yet was not seen. 

  
  
  
  
  


“I assume you have reached your decision, young Sir?”

“I will never forget you, Pennyworth. Never.” 

“Neither will I, Master Damian.” 

  
His old,  _ kind _ small smile was the last thing Damian saw from that place. 


End file.
